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The US Spent Billions in Kyrgyzstan, but Is Leaving Without a Trace

Since 2001, the US Government has dumped staggering amounts of money into Manas Air Force Base, a critical Air Force outpost in Kyrgyzstan. The base costs US taxpayers 60 million dollars each year in rent. 100 million dollars a year is siphoned into the country through USAID. 300 million plus dollars are sunk into fuel contracts, with fees for each takeoff and landing. Finally, there are the millions more spent each month on the mundane services of the base: food, cleaning, construction, garbage disposal. The United States has reason for the billions it has dumped into the base. It is a critical supply point for the war in Afghanistan. 97% of troops going to the Central Asian war pass through the base at least once, as well as the vast majority of fuel and huge quantities of goods. It is also where the Air Force stations its “super tankers,” vital to extending the range of warplanes on long sorties to Afghanistan.

After 13 years, though, the base is leaving, its contract extension having been denied by the Kyrgyz government because of intense political pressure from Russia. A lot of money is leaving, too. Kyrgyzstan’s GDP is only 6.5 billion, and the base was the government’s second biggest source of income. The first is a gold mine. The government, if not the country, is definitely going to feel the squeeze.

The country of Kyrgyzstan. Manas Air Force base is next to the capital Bishkek, which sits near the northern border.

We set out to find out what kind of economic legacy the base will leave in this tiny post-Soviet country, after thirteen years and so many billions. The answer? Not much. Most money never seems to have left the Kyrgyz Presidents’ families. With the exceptions of some airport upgrades, and a few high profile donations to orphanages by USAID, there is little visible legacy. Few will really notice that the base is gone, and even fewer have benefited. Unless, of course, you’re a customer of Metro Pub.

Metro Pub is the expat watering hole on Chui Street. It’s on Bishkek’s main drag, a few blocks down from Parliament and the presidential palace. The place is designed to make you forget you’re in Central Asia, with big screen TV’s tuned to ESPNESPN and a long dark wood bar with high stools. It’s an insular community where everyone knows each other, or at least they know Richard, the British owner who limps around the bar with a cane and a cigarette and curses at customers who want to change the channel. There aren’t very many foreigners in Bishkek, and most of them contract for the base. Almost all of them drink at Metro.

We walked in and sat at the bar and ordered drafts of the local beer. Behind us, some Canadians were taking vodka shots. They worked for Kumtor, the gold mine, and had had a brutal day of negotiations with a government that wanted to nationalize their business. Along the bar was a solid row of contractors, all having private and expletive-filled discussions. The vast majority of the millions the base was spending in the country were flowing through the hands then holding beer at that bar. The guy who owned the property, David Edelman, also controlled the base’s fuel contracts for most of its stay. When it comes to the flow of foreign money in Bishkek, you’re either inside the bar or outside the bar.

Aaron was a mid-thirty year old contractor who happened to be sitting next to us, a network engineer at Manas who’d been in the country for two years. Before Bishkek, he’d been in Qatar. He told us that he liked to contract abroad because it kept him out of debt in America, and he got to move around every few years.

He liked Kyrgyzstan. He’d married a Kyrgyz woman, and made friends with many in the small expat community. But it wasn’t nearly enough to make him stay. He’ll be working for the Air Force in the Philippines before winter.

“I saw the writing on the wall,” he said. “The base is closing, and it’s time for me to go elsewhere.” He is taking his wife with him.

Aaron’s answer was a common refrain among the employees we talked to. Everyone was leaving with the base, and many already had. The bar was only half full.

One exception to the rule is Ravil Yakupov, a Bishkek native who has worked at the base since it opened. Unlike most of Metro’s patrons, Ravil was not greeted with backslaps or shouts of familiarity by other patrons; the Kyrgyz was not a regular. He was there because the meeting was set by the American Chamber of Commerce, after we had requested to meet a local who works with the base. Ravil was their poster boy.

The Kyrgyz entrepreneur launched into a story of success, beginning with a contract to rent trucks to the base shortly after it opened in 2001. Over the past decade, his company expanded with the importance of the base, helping supply construction materials for the Afghanistan conflict like solar lights and sheet metal. His biggest job is collecting the trash. Ravil has become the official collector and recycler of American garbage, of which the base produces 30 to 40 tons a day. Ravil claims it’s “the best quality trash in all of Kyrgyzstan.” He makes money refashioning trash into quality goods, making buckets from bottle caps and new boxes from cardboard. Despite the dirty job, he still requires his 40 employees to wear white shirts and black ties, which he claims his American employers appreciate for its professionalism. “No one else can provide the same standard of care” Ravil said proudly.

It was an impressive narrative to be sure, and demonstrated how the Manas base had contributed to some local businesses during its years of operation. But when our questions turned to the future, the tone of the conversation quickly changed.

When Manas’ contract expires mid next year, the Krygyz business owner expects to fire 35 out of 40 employees. Besides the Americans, he says there are no other clients in Bishkek willing to pay for his services. When we asked him about negotiating a deal with the nearby Russian air base (whose contract was recently extended to 2032), Ravil laughed. “Do you expect me to work for nothing? The Russians never pay.” Staying in Bishkek ultimately means he will have to find a new direction for his business when the Americans leave.

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True, the USA pandered to Kyrghyzstan to prop up the Afghan war effort. Even more true, money disappears in former Soviet republics faster than you can say CCCP. Yet, I wonder if the USA has tried to create (and leave) a legacy, perhaps in the form of an American school or library, that might allow it it connect with more of the common Kyrghyz. After all, the current governments of Russia and Kyrghyzstan will change in the future, and the USA might get some ROI by establishing a friendly cultural bridge with locals.

This so sad Ravil has completeley forgotten where he is, where he was brought up and at whose expense he has got education. Sadly he must have forgotten Russia, who “never pays” cancelled Kyrgyzstan 500 million USD governmental debt this year, if not to mention military and humanitarian rivers of aid poured into the country regularly, like construction of few hydro plants on naryn river fully at the expense of Russia, printing os school textbooks for Kyrgyzstan schools, etc, etc. It is sad he will have to fire 35 our of his 40 employees, but the statement he makes is misleading and insulting. Most important is that it is a true slander.

Gentlemen, sadly you won’t be the first cycling reporters who thought they had struck gold with an American Base story and I suspect you won’t be the last. Your reporting style would be worthy of Fox news and I am sure that a job awaits upon your return, in short it’s accuracy shows a wonderfully blinkered approach to reporting that is all too common.

“But when the base closes, a whole host of institutions, businesses, and an insular community of expats will quietly disappear from the city”. By this comment you have omitted a number of other groups that will suffer directly. Your inferring that a “whole host of institutions” will suffer from the base closure is misleading, there are certainly a few and the Metro is one of them, but what you have failed to comment on is the huge number of families that will be impacted by local job losses. Individuals employed on the base support complete families and their suffering will go unnoticed. If in your piece you could have given any other institutions rather than just using the Metro Pub maybe people would have taken notice.

You have also failed to comment on the good that the base outreach has done and is still doing. To right this off as “a few high profile donations to orphanages by USAID” demeans the base and it’s personnel who over the years have renovated schools and orphanages, managed to fund over 200 heart surgeries for children, donated beds, equipment and supplies to a number of medical institutions, visited and donated gifts of clothing to various orphanages and generally have had a positive impact wherever they go. Next time you should also consider that the base outreach is not working with USAID and is independent, but who cares for accuracy?

Your implication that contractors earn vast amounts of money (spent at the pub) is also incorrect as a majority of those employed were on salaries just above minimum wage , their only advantage being a tax free income. In terms of your derisory comment about “the money leaving with them” in terms of contractors that may well be true but in terms of local business it is completely unfounded, but seeing as your article has shown no evidence of any of your fashionable claims it is in common with most of your reporting.

Finally, I would like to add that I take no offense at your attempt to belittle both myself, the Metro Bar and its contractor customers the vast majority of which are veterans, who over the years have spent more than their fair share on local charitable donations at my behest. Whilst I take no offense, they may do so and I suspect that Forbes would not want to be connected with anymore of your “Fox News” style of journalism.

I may be wrong about the author’s intentions, but the subtext to this article seems to be, “We spent billions, and for what,” as though Manas airbase was a failed humanitarian or development project in Kyrgyzstan. We spent billions renting and maintaining a supply base whose primary goal was in-flight refueling of all cargo planes before entering Afghan airspace. Much of those billions were fuel contracts – payment for services rendered. It was never conceived as a project to transform Kyrgyzstan or Bishkek.

I’ve spent my fair share of time in Metro Pub, and most U.S. officials there feel that we bargained an extremely low rent and cheap fuel contracts initially (although local actors eventually bargained their way up to a more reasonable level over time). So, again, if the subtext of that title was meant to say that those billions were just tossed out the window, it’s a poor portrayal of our time there. And the fact that the military is leaving “without a trace” is, if anything, a testament to how successfully and professionally the base was run, generally avoiding political controversy and unnecessary engagement with local politics.

“For what?” was not the point of this article, something we make clear in the first paragraph when we outline the importance of the base to US efforts. We were not making the case that the US needed to have more of a humanitarian impact.

All we were pointing out was that there really isn’t much of an economic legacy to the base. When it leaves, it will not leave the economy greatly changed. That’s interesting when you look at how much the USG was spending compared to Kyrgyzstan’s GDP.

I see, and that’s why I prefaced my comment by saying that I wasn’t sure of your intentions. Don’t get me wrong; I liked the article, and I agree that this exit “without a trace” might seem puzzling to some at first glance. I just wish you did more to dispel this mystery rather than to reify it. So, in the interest of being informative (and not snarky, honest):

History and research both demonstrate that money pumped into a clientalistic political system tends to reinforce clientalism; so change as a result of base contracts would probably be more surprising than stasis. Furthermore, as your own figures show, most of those billions went into fuel contracts that flowed directly to Kazakhstan, with Kyrgyz elite skimming just a bit off the top.

Furthermore, like many heavily agricultural economies, much of Kyrgyzstan’s wealth and productivity escapes official figures. A portion of the agricultural product is either directly consumed by the producing communities before ever being assigned a monetary value, or gets exchanged in local markets, where cash changes hands constantly and without the volume of transactions ever being calculated or reported. Corruption prevents the tax service from accurately calculating this wealth.

Having lived in Kyrgyzstan for a number of years, I can state that the official GDP per capita is irreconcilable with the standard of living that people actually enjoy, even in rural areas. Taken together, these points indicate that the wealth pumped into the country from Manas base is not so substantial beyond the networks of entrepreneurs that you cite.

Good article. However it missed out lots of related information. What about roughly a thousand locals that work on a base cooking food etc? They live mostly in nearby villages and their wages is very decent for Kyrgyzstan. What about workers of the base barbershop? They will all lose their jobs once base closes. I come to Metro pub as well. But besides that we are all using local taxi, we rent local apartments, we spend money in good restaurants etc. Some restaurants, like Cyclone on Chui ave will lose huge chunk of money when we leave. So this article could be expanded. How about local girls losing a chance to marry an American guy? I heard stories that some local girls do whatever they can to get employed on the base in order to “pick up” an American guy. Girls that come to Metro pub? Many of them married foreigners as well and left the country. If more local girls knew about Metro pub being a place where lots of single foreign men hang out, I am sure it would be full every night. The problem is that there is very little word of mouth.

Dear Esteemed Authors…. You are brilliant … Seems you could not feel all this sad story about … but at least in a few days .. or hours , you tasted the right smell of the dish … Yes… Manas is not a base… Manas is not an army spot of US in a map. Manas changed the country . Epoch if you want… a jump for a beautiful wild country , forgotten by God … not one bar .. not dozen of them .. but even the city will change… It was a direct as much as you can imagine – direct investment into the country .I can not even explain you need to feel leaving there like me for a couple of months… it was an oasis of US life style in the opposite part of the globe … everyone gained something from that …people just still not aware .. US community broth a rules and life style , standards and freedom About Russia and comments… Russia is Great country . no doubt and no doubt about help they delivered and will deliver…and a bow for Russia for what they do . but for KG , why this small peaceful country can not be a friend of all . They made a big step into a west style … and not will be back into 2000… when rats were running in the streets everywhere at night… long long story…